In Which Our Hero Eats Theater for Dinner
“What do you plan to do after clown school?”
- Gonzo theater in NYC
- Play with children
- Live a damn good life
That’s about it.
Other topics?
—
This weekend I attended, for the first time in my life, a Michelin-star restaurant.
A two-star place that, until this year, carried three.
What struck me wasn’t the prestige.
It was the theatricality.
The whimsy. The humor.
They turned a hot dog into a 1 × 1 × 0.5 cm gelatin cube that tasted exactly like a hot dog.
They turned a PB&J into a deconstructed PB&J, complete with hand-peeled grapes.
They opened the meal with torches and epic music.
They ended it by painting dessert onto the tabletop.
My main experience throughout wasn’t taste — it was laughter.
Yes, the flavors were excellent.
Yes, the chemistry and artistry were impressive.
But come on: a tiny gelatin hot dog? A micro-PB&J?
These are jokes. Delicious jokes. High-budget pranks.
For $3 I can go to The Wiener’s Circle and get an actual hot dog.
Here, for $30, I got a hot-dog-flavored Lego brick.
And weirdly: I loved it.
Not because of the taste (though the tastes were good) but because of the experience:
the camaraderie, the conversation, the atmosphere, the emotions.
These were absolutely, unquestionably worth it.
And they had nothing to do with flavor.
The one dish that didn’t land — a caviar-and-chocolatey-coffee concoction — failed for a simple reason:
I didn’t know how to feel about it.
It tasted fine. Interesting. Curious.
But I couldn’t tell whether the intended emotion was awe, nostalgia, whimsy, melancholy, or… “???”
That’s why it faltered.
A performer needs to tell the audience how to feel.
Is this a comedy or a tragedy?
Where are we going?
What’s the poster of this show?
My mother didn’t like Uncut Gems because HOLY SHIT THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU EXPECT WHEN YOU PUT ON AN ADAM SANDLER MOVIE.
It wasn’t the film’s fault.
It was the emotional contract she thought she’d signed.
I like immersive performance art.
I like blurring reality and theater.
I want to perform in vivo, turning ordinary spaces into meta-experiences.
But the key to all of that is simple:
Make people feel the way you want them to feel.
It helps when they know what you’re going for.
Or when the emotional direction is obvious.
But those aren’t required.
At clown school, they never tell us what the outcome should be.
They poke, prod, nudge; but they don’t name the destination.
That’s the challenge.
And the gift.
If they knew where we were supposed to end up, maybe they’d tell us.
But they don’t.
So we must each find our own path.
🤡
Julian Wise 